Hunter has gone too far from the original concept

[Lorgar Aurelian]

yea fuck that im not rerolling after 10 yrs because some idiots wanted a meme spec.

Then play the other 2 specs no one is making you play survival and blizzard apparently like the meme spec as there not reverting it back to ranged in BFA.

[threads]

Then play the other 2 specs no one is making you play survival and blizzard apparently like the meme spec as there not reverting it back to ranged in BFA.

nah lol i'll just stay unsubbed. all 3 specs are shit tier design atm.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

nah lol i'll just stay unsubbed. all 3 specs are shit tier design atm.

That’s also a reasonable option.

[Novistador]

Deadzone? Fun? Do you raid or pvp? Because that mechanic was just absolute ass for both of those things.

[Bepples]

it's a shame so many people can't get out of the "i only play hunter to be ranged" mindset.. Survival is the most fun melee spec in game atm.

As other people have said, Hunters are fully in the right for having this mindset because it was a ranged class and you had people attached to each of the three ranged specs. Don't act like veteran Hunters are in the wrong here.

it's not like every spec is melee it's just the one..

So? There were people who liked the Survival ranged spec that melee Survival replaced. How is it fair to expect them to just forsake their playstyle preferences and go pick up a vastly different ranged spec? You can't pretend melee Survival just has a peaceful existence while people are unfairly trying to trample all over it. Melee Survival is the one that was a recent, FORCEFUL addition to the Hunter class at the expense of an existing spec.

If you picked a hunter solely to be ranged you can still pick a different class that has 3 ranged specs.

Again, an argument that relies on total apathy of the playstyle preferences of ranged Hunters. Those ranged specs do not play like Hunters and no spec currently plays like old Survival did. It doesn't fucking matter that there are other ranged options. They're obviously not all equal to people with a preference to a particular playstyle. Maybe if you were capable of understanding our stance beyond "uhhh, so they want just a ranged spec and class, right?", you would realise this.

And 99% of people don’t raid mythic so your right it doesn’t matter.

Are we venturing into the territory of arguing that there's some massive hidden population of casual players of those specs out there that makes up for the low raid population? This will be fun.

If a spec is unpopular in raiding, chances are it's unpopular everywhere else too. Especially in Legion where specs are more distinct than ever, it's harder to swap specs than ever, and balance between specs has been relatively under control.

Then play the other 2 specs no one is making you play survival and blizzard apparently like the meme spec as there not reverting it back to ranged in BFA.

Again, this "live and let live" argument doesn't fly, neither does "go play something else". No one is making us play Survival, but they sure did force us to not play ranged Survival in the most total manner possible. The other two ranged specs play nothing at all like old Survival. And before you reply with the "but the other specs are different from their earlier versions too" line that you people cling to (since all of your arguments are rooted in ignorance and apathy): extent matters. While BM and MM are heavily changed, they are still far more similar to their prior iterations than Survival is. And neither of them play like old Survival, which is the playstyle a lot of people preferred and there was NO valid reason to remove it. Melee Survival is the spec in the wrong here: stop trying to deflect blame.

Also, Blizzard development in this post-WoD era is driven by ego and pride. It's no surprise they are doubling down on a failed design direction. That does not mean the spec will last forever. Ranged Survival lasted for years and was pretty successful the entire time until new developers with a new mindset (one marred by melee favouritism) decided it needed to go. What makes you think melee Survival is immune to that sort of shift in mindset? It has been around for a far shorter period and it's been nothing but embarrasing failure. There will come a point where Blizzard themselves will lose faith, or newer developers come in with a different opinion. I'm sure they will stick with the melee idea for as long as possible and probably come up with some weird compromises, but I predict a low likelihood of a purely melee Survival lasting as long as ranged Survival.

[infinitemeridian]

Get over it - Survival is never going back to ranged, and there was nothing interesting or unique about the spec. How about we focus on making survival actually fun and interesting? The basics are there, it just needs some fine-tuning.

[FAILoZOFF]

there was nothing interesting or unique about the spec.

this
before current specializations were born, every class had 3 paths to emphasis on their 3 most iconic... functionalities, these weren't specializations we know today that are pretty much, more of a stand-alone classes than said specializations.
hunters had a tree that focused on archery, pet and everything else- survival that is.
while first 2 were always strong on their phantasy, survival was ALWAYS inbred without any clear one; yeah there were improved traps, mostly and some other "hunter'y" stuff, but nothing to really build from. Traps as "side utility" work great, having them as a part of rotation kills off their.. flavor.
So again, I'd shut down that inbred spec altogether. Merge good bits with other 2 specs, especially BM which even now have similar theme as current surv.
BM's could then have a choice similar to how frost DKs and Fury warriors had previously, but instead of choice between DW/2hander or 1h/2h, BM hunters would have a choice between ranged and melee wep. This way both specs wouldn't have to be watered down in any "core" aspect of being a hunter, just to make room for survival.

Old surv gameplay could return in some form for MM, but definitely in more "inline" classic hunter theme, bleeds, strings/poisons, even explosive shot could fit in (not the Legion aberration form). I mean I see nothing "out of place" with MM using Explosive shot. Whole Black Arrow thing was born as a way for hunter to apply Immolation aura dot at range which... proceed LnL, but what did it have to do with the class, or even spec, I will never know. So random, as strapping some kind of fel themed ability onto the mage for no good reason. Current BA summoning undead pets is even more weird.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

alots o words.

Play styles change you need to get over it, even if survival didn’t then meele there’s still no saying it would stay a way you liked.

I don’t care what’s popular in raiding i find survival fun and know others who do. If raiders don’t like it good for them there’s other things in the game then raiding.

There’s no point arguing with you past this you think it was better before I don’t agree that’s that.

[Bepples]

Get over it - Survival is never going back to ranged, and there was nothing interesting or unique about the spec. How about we focus on making survival actually fun and interesting? The basics are there, it just needs some fine-tuning.

People said it was never going melee either. Circumstances change. Assuming melee Survival is forever safe is wishful thinking, especially given its track record of failure so far.

Obviously people found ranged Survival interesting or unique since it was routinely one of the most popular specs in the game. It's ironic how you accuse ranged Survival of not being interesting and then in the very next sentence say melee Survival is not interesting and, more importantly, not fun. Is being fun less important than being unique? Sounds like Legion class design 101.

Plus, Survival is not just a bit of "fine-tuning" away from being a good spec.

Even ignoring the total lack of merit for being melee in the first place, the playstyle is a mess of a bloated number of abilities that a) don't serve their intended purpose and b) don't synergise with each other, mainly due to the excessive nostalgia bait (e.g. Raptor Strike has no reason to exist at all besides "Look! It's back from Vanilla!"). Most of its toolkit is lifted directly from other specs with little to no change, with Mongoose Bite being the only truly unique mechanic.

It's theme (which, may I remind you, is the primary stated reason for the remake in the first place) hasn't been this poorly focused since Burning Crusade with simultaneous attempts to make it a clone Arms warrior, BM Hunter, and Tinker all in one. You have a focus on being "toe-to-toe" with your opponent with a melee weapon which is most definitely a Warrior fantasy and not a Hunter one. This is pretty ironic for a spec that is named "Survival" and the purpose of which is to use any available advantage to gain the upper hand and survive (i.e. not artificially restricting itself to the vastly-more-dangerous melee range). At the same time, you use traps and explosives. As a melee class. That is moronic. Literally the only reason the traps exist is to pretend that it somehow still appeals to the old Survival utilitarian identity, and the grenades are part of a botched attempt to go down a technological route. Finally, it's also meant to be "fighting alongside the pet", which is basically melee Beast Mastery. It's a clusterfuck of confused and directionless class design that results from there being no clear goal other than "Melee Hunter, you guys! Get hyped! Remember how Hunters could be melee!?" (and no, they were never intended to be purely melee).

Survival is not "so close" to being a well-made spec. It's flawed to the core and needs ANOTHER total remake, even if that remake is into being a new melee spec. Pathetic. Ranged Survival's changes were mostly additive over years while melee Survival needs a full remake after 1 expansion. It really goes to show the night-and-day difference between how the spec is being handled before and after 2015. If you actually trust these people to get it right after everything they've fucked up and continue to fuck up, all I can say is: good luck, you'll need it.

Play styles change you need to get over it, even if survival didn’t then meele there’s still no saying it would stay a way you liked.

I don’t care what’s popular in raiding i find survival fun and know others who do. If raiders don’t like it good for them there’s other things in the game then raiding.

There’s no point arguing with you past this you think it was better before I don’t agree that’s that.

I loved how you are so predictable that I was able to contradict your argument here before you even posted it:

And before you reply with the "but the other specs are different from their earlier versions too" line that you people cling to (since all of your arguments are rooted in ignorance and apathy): extent matters. While BM and MM are heavily changed, they are still far more similar to their prior iterations than Survival is. And neither of them play like old Survival, which is the playstyle a lot of people preferred and there was NO valid reason to remove it. Melee Survival is the spec in the wrong here: stop trying to deflect blame.

Survival being unpopular in raiding very likely corresponds to it being unpopular everywhere else. We obviously can't accurately determine how many actual active Survival mains there are total, but to argue that Survival is only unpopular in raiding is equivalent to arguing that there's some massive population of casual Survival Hunters who don't raid that makes up for the low representation in raiding. Yes, raiders are a minority, but the flipside is that they are people who are committed enough to the specs they play that they take them to competitive content; that makes them a good indicator of how the playerbase in general is committed to the spec. Every spec in the game is going to have a subset of people who raid and a subset of casual players who never step foot in the raid. Survival is uniquely unpopular in raiding; you're banking on it not only being not as popular for casual players but MORE popular than any other spec in the game... as one of the most complex specs. That's a fantasy. The only thing that could explain that is extremely poor performance for an otherwise fun spec, like Survival in 6.2. Survival now does not have extremely poor performance and routinely gets panned on the forums even by a lot of people who like the idea for being overly complex, convoluted, and most definitely not fun.

And yes, some people find Survival fun. More people found ranged Survival to be fun, and those people are now having less fun so that the smaller niche of melee players can have fun. That's a good summary of the entire argument against Survival. Melee Survival is fun at the expense of others.

[Lex Icon]

you keep going on and on about raiders as if they don't play whichever is ever spec is the best performing one rather than fun(unless casual).
representation in raiding and arenas are just a reflection of what's the strongest at the moment.

[Bepples]

you keep going on and on about raiders as if they don't play whichever is ever spec is the best performing one rather than fun(unless casual).
representation in raiding and arenas are just a reflection of what's the strongest at the moment.

BM has the lowest performance of all 3 Hunter specs yet it is by far the most popular, even in raiding.

Argument invalid.

[Nefarious Tea]

BM has the lowest performance of all 3 Hunter specs yet it is by far the most popular, even in raiding.

Argument invalid.

That's because it's piss easy whereas with SV and MM require you to actually learn how to play the spec. BM two abilities with a 10s CD, one filler with a 40 energy cost, and then 1 minute+ cooldowns. BM's obnoxious over-representation is an artifact of most players being utterly unwilling to learn how a spec works and instead play a braindead spec, even if it's garbage. There's a reason BM has always been the "noob" spec, just like with Demonology warlocks.

Edit: Although in thinking about it, I concede that there may also be a fair amount playing BM because Marks is generally considered a mechanical mess that is frustrating and not fun to play.

[Moozart]

I LOVED my Hunter in vanilla.
The whole melee, deadzone, ranged mechanic was really fun.
I loved wearing these huge 2h Agility swords. Or dualwielding some other swords.
When a Warrior or Rogue attacked me and I dodged, I loved these huge Mongoose Bites.
I loved having to Wing Clip them and get out of deadzone range so I could hit my ranged abilites.
Sure, in raids you never went melee, but in PvP the melee and deadzone aspects were a huge part of the class.

Today, what is this class?
Survival is this mash your buttons melee spec. While the rotation is fun enough, it's purely melee, no ranged abilities at all.
MM has become this sad no pet and "keep up your Voulnerable debuff" spec. How did it come to this?
BM is OK but it is literally a 3 button dps rotation... come on.

I at least had some fun with the old Survival spec with the Explosive Shot, Kill Shot and Black Arrow with an actual pet on my side.

Also, what happened to the 2 ability you got in the game, Serpent Strike??? Not enough of the class fantasy?

I think the class is at an all time low in Legion.

Just give me an Ranged Melee hybrid like it used to be. Even if it is just one of the specs...

Do you guys like the direction they have taken hunter?

When Classic servers come out you can have ALLLLL of this till your little heart is content.

[Thelxi]

I like MM and BM, I don't think they have strayed too far from any original concept. SV on the other hand..

[Mazzeric]

When they remove "iconic" specs/playstyles from the game, it really makes you wonder what the reasoning is, because it's not something they really seem to talk about in developer interviews or blogs; the sweeping overhauls... like did they ever explain why they wanted hunter to have a completely melee spec? Why they wanted old Survival to not exist anymore? Would have been nice to hear their side of this since they could have also just made the new Survival a fourth spec, and called old Survival "Munitions" or something to that effect (explosives/engineering oriented hunter idk).

The Explosive Shot Survival Hunter was killed off without much fanfare on behalf of the devs, which really is a head-scratcher to me since it was such a well-loved and played spec. Since the beginning of WoD they have definitely seemed to forget the core fun of classes/specs in favor of this... "overdesigned" and flavorful playstyle. This change definitely tops the list of things they seem to have sacrificed for "class fantasy" without taking into consideration what they're giving up to achieve that design goal.

Does anyone actually like Hunter anymore? Like to the degree that Hunter was loved in MoP and prior? I've seen so many Hunters quit the game...

Will be interesting to see if they make sweeping changes again in BFA cause I think all three specs are kind of sloppily put together right now.

[Sylv_]

ArP ICC Hunter was amazing. I had some world #1 parses with that spec, without my raid feeding them to me. Pure f-ing skill and understanding.

The first iteration of focus, at first, was awful. Then I found out how to abuse MM and it became fun.

I leveled to max in MoP and immediately quit because that was such a shit hole expansion, so I cannot comment.

WoD Hunter was in a good state, especially Survival. The class flux'd between a few different specs, for a few different raids and encounters. It was honestly a good time to be a raiding hunter. Did your current spec not perform well on x encounter? Change that spec and be #1 on damage (and of course performance) again. Hunters were super versatile in WoD.

Legion Hunters, jesus fucking christ what were they thinking? I did enjoy abusing marked shot for leveling because it trivialized content immediately. It's been kinda shit of a play style, but the class can still be abused for PvE extremely hard.

ArP / Sv (WoTLK) -> Cata -> WoD -> BC -> Legion -> Vanilla ----> Gay Pandas probably.
I'm uncertain about a few of the outliers for ranking TBH. The QoL changes hunters have received have been phenomenal. Vanilla hunter honestly played like absolute shit.

[threads]

Get over it - Survival is never going back to ranged, and there was nothing interesting or unique about the spec. How about we focus on making survival actually fun and interesting? The basics are there, it just needs some fine-tuning.

so ranged SV was not interesting, yet we need to focus on making melee interesting? wtf lol

[Lorgar Aurelian]

I loved how you are so predictable that I was able to contradict your argument here before you even posted it:
.

i'm predictable because we have gone over this topic in at-least 2 different threads...... you like it one way i don't. you think raiding stats are the only thing that matter i don't. theirs nothing more to it, you can like what you like ill like what i like in the end there not the same thing and either one of us will get what we like or neither of us will.

[Sylvaeres]

I LOVED my Hunter in vanilla.
The whole melee, deadzone, ranged mechanic was really fun.
I loved wearing these huge 2h Agility swords. Or dualwielding some other swords.
When a Warrior or Rogue attacked me and I dodged, I loved these huge Mongoose Bites.
I loved having to Wing Clip them and get out of deadzone range so I could hit my ranged abilites.
Sure, in raids you never went melee, but in PvP the melee and deadzone aspects were a huge part of the class.

Today, what is this class?
Survival is this mash your buttons melee spec. While the rotation is fun enough, it's purely melee, no ranged abilities at all.
MM has become this sad no pet and "keep up your Voulnerable debuff" spec. How did it come to this?
BM is OK but it is literally a 3 button dps rotation... come on.

I at least had some fun with the old Survival spec with the Explosive Shot, Kill Shot and Black Arrow with an actual pet on my side.

Also, what happened to the 2 ability you got in the game, Serpent Strike??? Not enough of the class fantasy?

I think the class is at an all time low in Legion.

Just give me an Ranged Melee hybrid like it used to be. Even if it is just one of the specs...

Do you guys like the direction they have taken hunter?

Deadzone was one of the worst mechanics in this game's history. I agree with you about MM, and BM (to a lesser degree, I actually like current BM).

[Free]

hunters were considered a joke in BC arena for a single reason - d e a d z o n e
awful mechanic